Baku Today, Azerbaijan
July 24 2004

One More Asylum-Seeking Armenian Appears in Baku

Baku Today 24/07/2004 12:32

One more ethnic-Armenian appeared in the capital of the arch foe
neighbor, Azerbaijan, on Friday, seeking to find an asylum in a third
country, ANS reported.

Ispek Sumbatovich, 65, who was detained in Baku’s main airport named
after Heydar Aliyev, claimed that he fled from Armenia in order to
get rid of the hard economic and political situation in his home
country.

Sumbatovich, who confessed that he had fought against Azerbaijan in
1991-94 war, said he would inform the people of Azerbaijan about the
hard conditions in Armenia.

It was the second case of Armenians’ fleeing to Baku to find refugee
in a third country. Two Armenians, Roman Teryan and Artur Apresyan,
surprisingly appeared in Baku’s private ANS television early April of
this year, also claiming that they had left Armenia because of what
they called intolerable conditions in their country.

The two still are kept in the prison of Azerbaijan’s National
Security Ministry. Local media has cited former National Security
Minister Namiq Abbasov as saying that Teryan and Apresyan would be
moved to a third country by late July.

Azerbaijan and Armenia, two former Soviet republics in the southern
Caucasus, are at a state of no war no peace since the latter occupied
one-fifth of Azerbaijan’s territories during the war.

Azerbaijan’s occupied territories include Nagorno-Karabakh, a western
region that was home to nearly 100,000 ethnic-Armenians in late
1980s, and also seven administrative districts around
Nagorno-Karabakh; Lachin, Kelbejar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jebrail, Zengilan
and Qubadli.

Armenian troops continue occupying the Azerbaijani territories since
a cease-fire agreement signed in 1994 despite four UN Security
Council resolutions demanding immediate withdrawal from the
administrative districts.